Jonah Fialkoff makes 'America's Most Wanted' for his role in Belchertown kidnapping

NORTHAMPTON – He hasn’t been on the lam as long as Whitey Bulger, but so far Jonah Fialkoff is the one who got away in a case involving $1 million in buried cash, kidnapping and all kinds of double-crosses.

The case broke when Jonathan Pearson knocked on a door in Belchertown telling the resident that he had just been kidnapped. Pearson, it turned out, was an associate of Fialkoff and Finn J. O’Brien, brothers who were running a lucrative East Coast-West Coast marijuana operation. As prosecutors described the sequence of events over the course of several court proceedings, the brothers had buried a briefcase with $1 million in cash in the back yard of a Belchertown house owned by O’Brien. When they learned that some of that cash was missing, they suspected Pearson.

The brothers hired strongman and sometimes rapper Tycollo “Ty Bomb” Graham to kidnap Pearson. Fialkoff lured the victim to a house on 43 Federal St., where Pearson was duct-taped, Tasered, threatened with a knife and gun and told his dog would be cut up into little pieces. In the course of this, Graham brought in a friend, Cameron C. Andrade, for some extra muscle.

Tycollo "Ty Bomb" Graham at his guilty plea in 2010.

When the brothers left the premises, Pearson convinced Graham that he was being cut out of his fair share of the loot and the rapper turned the tables on O’Brien and Fialkoff, tying them up when they returned. Graham then traveled to a storage facility in Connecticut where the drug money was being kept. Surveillance cameras showed Graham leaving the facility with some guitar cases. Police later found $40,000 in cash and an empty guitar case at the Rhode Island house of Graham’s mother.

Graham and Andrade both pleaded guilty to their roles in the kidnapping and were sentenced to 7-10-year prison terms. Fialkoff and O’Brien both disappeared. O’Brien was eventually apprehended in Utah with $192,020 in cash and a new Silverado pickup truck. He pleaded guilty to assault and drug charges in Hampshire Superior Court in 2009, but balked at the plea agreement when a judge added three years probation to his 2½-year jail sentence. He eventually accepted the deal.

Fialkoff, O’Brien’s brother, has yet to be found. A 5’ 4” martial artist, Fialkoff funded a recording company called “Blaze the World Records” and calls himself “The Indie Renegade.” Graham was one of his artists before he became his muscle.

In a promotional video, Fialkoff touted his savvy in the music world.

“We need a movement that’s going to rock the world,” he said. “We need a movement that’s going to rock the indie music world.”

Law enforcement officials believe Fialkoff and his brother were moving as much as 4,000 pounds of marijuana a month. Police are looking for any information as to his whereabouts.